


Architects Have to Start at the Bottom

by BlueClue182



Series: Tumblr Fluff [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Historical, M/M, Skinny!Steve, Steve can't cook, super subtext, why admit your feelings when you can shower your crush with tokens of your love?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-14 05:53:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2180424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueClue182/pseuds/BlueClue182
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve tries making breakfast for Bucky on the morning of his first day on a new job. But the surprises don't stop there. How many ways can one say "I love you," without actually saying anything?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Architects Have to Start at the Bottom

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by http://permets-tu.tumblr.com/post/95138397281/josephjtoye-you-could-be-sad-about-your-otp-but. Not beta'ed. Pre-The First Avenger.

Bucky woke up to the smell of something he didn’t quite recognize. The air in the room was thicker than usual and he could hear Steve in the middle of a coughing fit. He sprung out of his bed and rushed to the kitchen in nothing more than threadbare boxers and a thin undershirt.  
“The HELL STEVE!” The kitchen was filled with grey smoke, which was coming from the toaster and the stove, and it smelled like a bonfire with potato scraps burning among the coals.   
“I was—” *cough* “—trying to make—“ *cough* Bucky waved his arms frantically and hurried over to the tiny window, looking for any bit of relief from the cloud of smoke that had formed above them.   
“Go sit on the bed til this clears, would ya?” Bucky ushered Steve into their room and crossed to the fire escape, throwing that window wide open too. The smoke curled and billowed towards the windows, and Bucky helped it along by swinging one of Steve’s oversized sketchbooks near one window, then the other.   
“Sorry. I thought—” *coughcough* whatever Steve was thinking was lost in another coughing fit. Bucky dropped the sketchbook and ran back over to the sink, where he filled a glass with water and practically skipped it over to Steve.   
“It’s okay—don’t hafta explain.”  
“I wanted ta… for your first day.” Steve gestured towards the stove with one hand, gulping down the water Bucky offered him with the other.   
“Aww Stevie!” Bucky tousled his best friend’s blonde mop. “It’s alright, I’ll whip something up for us before—”   
“—No!! Some of it made it okay it’s on a plate in the oven.” Bucky was afraid Steve would say that. But as long as Steve was breathing normal again, he couldn’t really complain about much. He just forced a weak smile.   
“Oh. Great! You just—I’ll go set up the—” But before he could finish his sentence, Steve was standing and heading back towards the kitchen.   
“Oh no you don’t. You gotta get dressed and ready. You’ve only got tweny minutes before you gotta be out the door.” Bucky was surprised that his smile had not yet waivered and given him away.   
“Right. Good lookin’ out, Stevie.” Steve smiled so wide that his excitement was infectious, and Bucky’s fake smile quickly became genuine. Steve closed the door to their room behind him, and Bucky let out the breath he didn’t know he had been holding in. His clothes were laid over the chair in the corner, and he noticed there was a sketch folded neatly on top of them. Somehow his smile got even wider. He began getting ready: pulling on the pants, suspenders loose at his hips, pocketing the sketch to look at later, and sitting down to pull on the fresh pair of socks Steve had brought home the night before. Just came in this morning! Steve had beamed proudly as he pulled them from his hand-me-down messenger bag. The luck just keeps on rollin’ in! Bucky had gotten a job from the PWA building some tunnel downtown, and he started work on it today, so he had to have good socks, Steve reasoned.   
Bucky shook his head. If this was their version of luck, he would hate to see what happened if it turned bad. He grabbed the old cap from his newsboy days, running his fingers through his hair before pulling the cap tight over the brunette locks that had gotten downright unruly. He grabbed the shirt, but, fully expecting to drop something on himself as he ate, opted to carry it instead of putting it on just yet. He caught a look at himself in the mirror and sighed. While he had shot up a whole foot and filled out nicely in the last year, Steve was still scrawny and a half-foot shorter. When the weather got bad, Steve had a limp—residual left over from his polio—and his cough was around more often than it was gone. Bucky frowned at his own health, wishing he could transfer even a portion of it to Steve.   
*coughcough* Speak of the devil. Bucky hurried out to the kitchen, where Steve had stirred up another, much smaller cloud of smoke from the toaster again, and the genuine smile returned to Bucky’s face.  
“I’d quit before you set our apartment on fire, kid.” Steve was waving his arms awkwardly toward the window. There was a plate of grey-ish mush at the table, with blackened toast on the side. Bucky’s smile shifted back to the fake kind.   
“Scrambled eggs and toast. Coffee in the mug. Milk in the ice box.” Bucky sniffed the mug, which smelled vaguely of coffee and vaguely like melted rubber and burned hair. Bucky had to hand it to Steve—he hadn’t just slightly messed up breakfast, he had done so spectacularly. Bucky laid his shirt over the arm of the couch and took his seat at the table. Steve had laid out a plate for himself with identically destroyed food. “Dig in, Buck! You’ll need your strength!” Bucky picked up his fork and tried to decide where he should begin.   
“You know, Stevie, I don’t mind makin’ the food.”  
“Yeah, but I wanted to give ya a break. You always cook.”  
“Well. This looks great. Thanks.”   
Steve beamed again. “You want the milk?”  
“Please.” Bucky decided on the eggs, and dug in as Steve got up to add some milk to Bucky’s ‘coffee’. Bucky chewed slowly, fairly certain he felt a crunch or two before swallowing and forcing another smile. Steve poured the milk into the mug, then gasped.   
“I totally forgot! You want a glass of just milk, right?”   
“No, no it’s alright. Sit. Eat with me before work!” The smile on Steve’s face was worth all the crunchy eggs on the planet. He planted himself in the chair directly across from Bucky, not even bothering to put the milk back before taking his seat. Bucky took another bite, chewed as little as possible this time (mercifully without a single crunch) and swallowed dramatically. Steve jumped back up again.   
“I almost forgot!” And he disappeared into their bedroom. Bucky wondered how he could discard of some of the mush without Steve finding out, and realized Steve took out the trash, cleaned the sink, and would probably wind up washing any of the clothes Bucky tried to hide a handkerchief full of mush in. A handkerchief he would likely promptly forget about. He opted instead to shovel the food into his mouth and try to get it over with as soon as possible. Steve returned and stopped short. Bucky was sitting with his cheeks full of greyish egg mush, fork poised over his plate, eyes huge. “That good, huh?” Bucky nodded slowly. “I’m so glad you like it!” Steve hurried back over to the table, hiding whatever he had grabbed in their room behind his back. “Here’s you last surprise for the day, promise.” He whipped out a real, tin lunch box. Bucky’s eyes went somehow even wider.  
“HOW?” He mumbled out through the mush. Steve looked down at the floor.   
“It wasn’t nothin’, Buck. I got it at work.”   
“uh-huh. How long ya been savin for it?” Bucky continued to mumble, before saying a short prayer against the eggs killing him and then letting them slide down his throat. He grabbed for the coffee to wash down the sour taste—had the eggs gone bad in protest of their mistreatment?—and it was Steve’s turn to mumble.   
“Couple ~~~~~~”   
“MONTHS?”   
“I saw it there and I knew I wanted to get it for you!!”   
“Jesus Steve!”  
“It’s nothin’, you do so much around here!”   
“Not for nothin’—you do a lot, too!”   
“Yeah but you take care’a me on topa it all.” Steve was scuffing his toes against the floor. “I didn’t put anything in it, figured you could get your own food on your way’t work. But anyhow Hawkins said it’ll keep fruit fresh all day.” Steve held the lunch box out to Bucky, who couldn’t help but reach out for it.   
“Thanks, Stevie. But listen, no more presents, okay? We each pull our weight around here—equal. You got that?” Steve nodded his head. “I gotta head out, but this was good.” Bucky pushed his chair out from the table and reached for his shirt, pulling it over his shoulders and mentally calculating if he had enough time to stop at the diner before showing up at the work site.   
“You want the toast wrapped up to go?” The tone in Steve’s voice made it impossible to resist. Bucky could pawn it off to some pigeons.   
“Sounds great, Stevie.” He reached into his pocket, where the sketch was still folded neatly, and pulled it out as Steve wrapped the toast into a light cloth. The sketch was a picture of the New York City Skyline, with Bucky seated atop his very own skyscraper between the empire state and Chrysler buildings. “Architect of the sky” was the title of the drawing. Bucky laughed.   
“S’funny. I’m workin’ on a tunnel, you know?” Steve turned to him, handing him the toast with one hand and the lunch box with the other.   
“I know. You’ll work your way up.” They exchanged smiles between them, and Steve took a seat at his own breakfast plate, taking a heaping bite of the eggs. “UGH! Mine taste awful! What’d I do different?” Bucky shrugged.  
“Try ‘em hot next time.”


End file.
